I am honored to have received a Fulbright Academic and Professional Excellence fellowship to conduct this research. I hope that friends, family and colleagues are following the adventure. And some of you have actually joined me in India!

“Research in a number of Indian states has shown that migrant construction workers in India often face dangerous working conditions and harsh living conditions. Many live in blue plastic tents without access to basic amenities. Many are recruited by intermediaries who distance workers from principal employers, and may quieten them with ‘advances’ that facilitate the underpayment of already low wages, and may constrain labourers’ movement.

Widely subjected to violence on and off site, women’s working days are lengthened by their shouldering of the bulk of reproductive labour. It is far from unusual for female construction workers, who remain confined to lower-waged ‘unskilled’ tasks, to be paid 50% less than their male counterparts for similar work.

Access to the provisions of the Building and other Construction Workers Welfare Boards, meanwhile, remains minimal: in the state of Karnatakaless than half of one percent of the funds collected by the Labour Department had been spent on workers’ welfare by the start of 2016. Migrant workers’ access to government-subsidised food grains, moreover, is compromised by impediments to the public distribution system’s portability, while the provision of crèches (nursery/daycare) is minimal both among migrant workers and those settled in non-notified slums.”